REMEDIES OF CIRCULATORY AND RESPIRATORY SYSTEM
By Dr. Fortier Bernoville
REMEDIES OF CIRCULATORY SYSTEM
Dr.Bernoville proposed to deal, this year with the drainage of the circulatory apparatus, the drainage of respiratory and genital systems. Last year he studied the generalities of drainage, drainage of the digestive system of the liver, drainage of the urinary apparatuses and of the digestive system.
(In this book we will give only the English translation of the drainage of the circulatory and respiratory system. Later on in a separate book we will try to publish his lectures on drainage of Urinary and Genital systems.
Dr.Bernoville first of all recalls to us that the drainage is before all a practice. It is the application of Homoeopathic remedies in a hierarchical and ordered manner. The word drainage designates all the therapeutic processes which consist in draining the toxins of the organism, to derivate them, to canalise them and to reequilibriate the organism. Such is the conception of Dr.Nebel and his adepts. If they defined a theory, they defined it only as a interpretation of unquestionable therapeutic and clinical facts.
The process of drainage is different according to the apparatuses of the organism in question. The drainage of the digestive system is Quantitative, because of the mass of the rejected matter by the intestines. The drainage of the urinary system is, on the contrary Qualitative (Degree of concentration of urines, and some rejected matters), the drainage of the skin is rather a mode of derivation which is much more than the drainage properly called (in fact the skin plays a very important part in the balance of the organism which was already indicated by Paracelsus). The hepatic drainage is very important because the liver is, so to say, the centre of integration of all the digestive liquids. As regards the drainage of the circulatory system it is necessary to remember that the ancients considered four temperaments, to each of which corresponds a special circulating liquid: Digestive temperament corresponds to blood, the Bilious temperament corresponds to bile, to Nervous temperament, atrabile (We must admit that the atrabile of the ancients corresponds in reality to a circulatory element which is not liquid, but purely an energy). This classification of the ancients is very interesting in the sense that the temperamental types may be treated by some important Homoeopathic remedies: The Lymphatic corresponds to Calcarea carbonica; the sanguin to Sulphur, the Bilious to Lycopodium and the Nervous to Arsenic and Phosphorous.
Dr.Allendy has, at present, renovated that classification basing on physiopathology; individual having more or less intense tonus, more or less plasticity according to the age: He describes them thus:
1. The Atoni-Plastic: Children whose tonus is weak but whose diseases are generalised (Lymphatic of the ancients)
2 Toni-plastic: Adolescent or young adults whose pathological reactions are at the same time strong and generalised (Sanguin of the ancients).
3. Toni-aplastic: Persons reaching at the end of the adult age or at the ripe age, who have still some tonicity but whose diseases are very often localised (Bilious of the ancients).
4. Atoni-aplastic: Persons reacting at the end of the adult age; old persons who have only very little tonicity and who localise their diseases in the form of lesions (Nervous of the ancients).
The morphological classification of Sigaud in greater part, may be represented by the above types: The Atoni-plastics are digestive, the toni-plastics are respiratory, the toni-aplastics are muscular (Lycopodium type of the Homoeopaths). These general notions of temperament and morphology are important for being taken into consideration because in the case of the drainage of the circulatory system we will have to consider specially the drainage of the blood, lymph, the interstitial spaces of the heart and blood vessels.
Dr. Bernoville exposes his study in a very simple manner, but at the same time shows the interest, the exactitude and the originality of his conceptions on this important subject from physiopathological point of view.
He first considers the drainage of the circulatory apparatus according to the organic and tissue anatomy, examining the local reactions of the important Homoeopathic remedies, on the vessels, blood, lymph and lymphatic ganglions, on the interstitial spaces, on the heart, etc…Then he describes the action of the same remedies according to a conception which is at the same time very interesting and really original and of which the truth is verified in practice. Let us continue: If the blood forms a liquid mass of 5 litres in an average, it does not represent the whole liquid circulating in the organism and we know that the liquid content of the tissues may be evaluated to 40 litres in an average. This liquid mass plays a considerably important part from physiopathological point of view on which one does not give any great importance. The most capital fact is the mode of the distribution of that liquid mass is variable and allows to characterise an individual at a given time of his existence. That enormous mass of liquid may in fact flow back either towards the centre or towards the peripheries of the organism. Besides every idea of congestion, venous or arterial, we may speak of peripheral congestion and central congestion. The venous congestion itself may be peripheric of the Pulsatilla type, or portal Sepia or Nux vomica type, etc…Thus schematically we may imagine the organism as a paisa with a hole. The hole will represent the light of the digestive tube and the spaces included in us, the periphery of the coin is the ambiant milieu and the spaces included between the glands and the small circumferences of the organism taken as a whole and the circulating liquid. The well indicated remedies are capable of acting on the distribution of this circulating liquid, blood and the liquid of the tissues, thus remedying the acute pathological troubles of the patient.
Bernoville was a major lecturer in homeopathy, and he was active in Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis, and a founder of the le Syndicat national des médecins homœopathes français in 1932, and a member of the French Society of Homeopathy, and the Society of Homeopathy in the Rhone.
Fortier-Bernoville wrote several books, including Une etude sur Phosphorus (1930), L'Homoeopathie en Medecine Infantile (1931), his best known Comment guerir par l'Homoeopathie (1929, 1937), and an interesting work on iridology, Introduction a l'etude de l'Iridologie (1932).
With Louis-Alcime Rousseau, he wrote several booklets, including Diseases of Respiratory and Digestive Systems of Children, Diabetes Mellitus, Chronic Rheumatism, treatment of hay fever (1929), The importance of chemistry and toxicology in the indications of Phosphorus (1931), and Homeopathic Medicine for Children (1931). He also wrote several short pamphlets, including What We Must Not Do in Homoeopathy, which discusses the logistics of drainage and how to avoid aggravations.
He was an opponent of Kentian homeopathy and a proponent of drainage and artificial phylectenular autotherapy as well.